Few kinds of communication can have the effect of a powerful presentation. Even a short speech can motivate people to change long-held beliefs or to take action, and a wonderfully delivered speech can transform a normal person into a leader.
In this course, Prof. William Kuskin provides a series of pragmatic videos and exercises for successful public speaking and presentations. The course develops through four themes—mastering fear, developing a creative formula, using verbal and body language, and anticipating the room—so that you can discover your personal power as a speaker and give excellent presentations.
Successful presentations do not rely on perfect teeth, a deep voice, or an army of scriptwriters. They depend largely on the same skills as successful Business Writing and Graphic Design: clarity, structure, and revision. The goal of the course, therefore, is to enable you to discover your own internal power as a speaker and express it to the world. After this course, with some practice, you will be able to go into any situation and command the room for as long as you like.

From the lesson

Engaging with the World

You’ve put away your fear. You’ve used the formula to write a clear talk, and you’ve tweaked it with the secret ingredient of creativity. You’ve rehearsed and mastered your personal verbal and physical language. Still, a conference room or a lecture hall is an unpredictable arena, one that contains an uncontrollable amount of variables: the layout of the space, the mood of the audience, the complexity of the questions—these are the elements of a presentation for which you can never fully prepare. How do you actually get ready to walk out on stage? The last module of “Successful Presentation” teaches you how to anticipate the field of the play so you are flexible, agile, and confident. It lays out, in simple terms, how to deal with interruptions and hostility alike, concluding the course by looking ahead to how you develop your own identity not merely as a public speaker, but as powerful individual.